


When The Cat's Away

by Britpacker



Category: New Avengers (TV)
Genre: F/M, Flirting, Humor, Mystery, Post-Series, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 13:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15973061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: When Gambit’s expertise is urgently required by our German friends, Purdey finds herself partnerless – but not for long…





	1. Flying Solo

**Author's Note:**

> I still own nothing, playing for pleasure not profit. 
> 
> Set straight after the trio’s adventures in Canada, this fic started from a random thought: that Purdey does seem to take her partner for granted, in more ways than one. So how would she cope flying solo for a while, with a swarm of other agents keen to take Gambit’s place?
> 
> I should also point out, this is the 1970s. An attractive woman in a male-dominated profession would exercise a choice – accept a colleague’s pass with a smile, or slap it down. I can see Purdey being exceptionally skilled in the latter art…

The silence was her first clue. Approaching their territory and not hearing voices was a sure sign amongst the triumvirate operating from the large oak-panelled third-floor office with a single name on the door that something – usually trouble – was afoot.

Yet Purdey’s heart still flipped at the sight of a single dark brown head, flecked these days with steely threads, on the farther side of their shared desk. “Gambit?” she enquired, foregoing the formalities. He would understand. 

Steed always did.

“Packing,” he replied, equally succinct. “We appear to have sprung a rather significant _leak_ in the Wall, and Bonn requires our assistance in plugging it. Given the high esteem in which he’s held over there…”

“You’re letting him go, after last time?” she protested, horrified. “Have you advised the relevant medical authorities?”

“They know his blood group, and I have no say in the matter.” As she slipped into her accustomed seat facing him Purdey noticed the fine lines, barely visible to the untrained eye, that bracketed the senior agent’s wry smile. “ _Der Fuehrer_ made the request in person. McKay, naturally, felt it impossible to refuse.”

“Schoeppnauer asked for Gambit specifically? Without backup?” 

“He did bring down an entire Stasi network without backup in ’75,” Steed reminded her, laying aside his pen to focus all his formidable attention on the restless girl. “And the fewer fingers in this pot, the better.” 

“How long…”

“Is a piece of string? A week or two. Possibly more, given Schoeppnauer’s bureaucratic tendencies. You could probably be there before he calls a cab…”

“Thanks.” Flared lilac skirt whipping around her legs, she was through the door before he finished speaking.

He watched her go with a faint, fond smile that quickly hardened into a dangerous scowl. The Germans were worried, and given McKay’s cryptic comments, with good reason. The best available man would be needed on the ground.

John Steed understood the rules better than any other man alive. On the other hand…

“I do reserve the right to protest them when I need the best man I have rather closer to home,” he grumbled, returning his attention to the ominous report that had landed an hour ago as silence, cold and unforgiving, reclaimed a room usually brimming with warmth, good humour and life.

*

She turned her key in the lock and hesitated, ear pressed against the door. “Come in, Purdey. I’m decent.”

“Well, that _would_ make a pleasant change.” Dispersing a broad grin with her fingertips, Purdey nudged past the barrier in time to see Mike Gambit shut the lid of his slightly battered suitcase with a decisive snap. “And I assume you _have_ left the naughty literature out, this time? They’re rather prudish on the other side of the Wall, I understand.”

“You might be surprised.” Eyebrows waggling, Gambit swung the case to the floor, matching her grin. “Steed told you?”

“He’s contacting the Berlin blood bank as we speak.” Uninvited, she flopped onto the oversized cream couch that dominated his living space, schooling herself not to consider its secondary, concealed, purpose. “Mike…”

“I know; and I will. Be careful,” he added quickly. Purdey unleashed her most innocent smile.

“I shan’t bother asking you to be good,” she drawled. 

“Because you know I’ll be magnificent.” She swatted his shoulder as he collapsed beside her, just far enough away for the niceties to be maintained. “It’s bad, Purdey-girl. Three separate cells wiped out in as many months.”

“No link?”

“Nothing our side know of.”

“Our people?”

“One group. The others were Bonn’s.”

“Hence their concern.”

“And our excuse. It shouldn’t take me more than a week or two, but…”

“One never knows.” Her hand shifted, coming to rest briefly over his, linked and relaxed between his knees. “Need a lift to the airport? I’m cheaper than a cab.”

“Not when dinner’s included,” he teased. Purdey pupped her glossed lips. 

“Well, if you’re too mean, mean, mean to offer a decent tip…” she chided, revelling in the rich roll of his laughter. “Do you want that lift, or not?”

“I do.” Unexpectedly he raised their hands, brushing his mouth across her knuckles. “And thanks. Anyone would think you’ll miss me.”

She made a show of retrieving her hand and wiping it decisively against her skirt, only the glint in her wide blue eyes betraying a merriment the match of his. “Don’t flatter yourself,” she admonished, stepping aside for him to seize his case and lead the way to the door. “Simply because your German friends pine for your company…”

Gambit flashed her a knowing smirk. “I’d be hurt, if I thought you meant it,” he parried, bolting for the stairs. “And _try_ to hurry up, for once. I do have a flight to catch!”


	2. Atmospheric Pressure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Purdey knows things will be different with Gambit away. Is she prepared for quite how different?

She told herself it was inevitable. That the Ministry without Gambit naturally felt different, the atmosphere changed. That without his presence at her shoulder, his dancing eyes a distraction from the bland monotony of the departmental hallways, it was natural she might see the flitting of other shadows more clearly.

It persuaded her, for the first hour of Day One.

Until she sprinted downstairs in search of a specific file and felt the spiderish crawl of something unpleasant up the seam of her stockings. Spinning on one heel – Purdey’s handbrake turn, _he_ called it – she caught Tony Harper’s lustful gaze full in the pelvic region, before it could be whipped to the comparative safety of shoulder height. “Do not pass Go,” she hissed, taking some satisfaction from his flaming embarrassment. “And _definitely_ do not collect two hundred pounds.”

“Can’t jail a man for looking.” Robert Morrison strolled out of Files before she could barge in, watery blue eyes taking the opposite track to his colleague’s. Purdey smirked.

“I _can_ hospitalise him,” she volunteered. Morrison whistled.

“Feisty,” he observed.

“And good.” Dipping her right shoulder, she charged hard enough to knock him sideways into the doorjamb, not bothering to apologise as he groaned. “Mr Titherington, I don’t suppose you could point me in the direction of the February intercept file? It _is_ rather urgent…”

The requisite document secured, she hurried back to Steed’s office, burying herself in it for the remainder of the morning. _Work_ , she told herself sternly. Without a certain dark-haired, mischievous fellow agent at her elbow, _that_ should be a great deal easier.

*

“You ought to take a break. For lunch.” They’d gone over the same paperwork three times each, pausing in between to compare the sparse notes on their jotters, before Steed heaved himself with a creak of protesting bone from his seat, both hands moving automatically to the small of his back. “Can’t have you going hungry in Gambit’s absence. I’ll report our progress—”

“Or lack thereof,”

“To the Minister and meet you back here in an hour.” With a wry smile Steed delicately drew back her chair, leaving no further room for debate. Sweeping her section of the supposed evidence back into its dusty black binder, Purdey smoothed down her skirt and allowed him to steer her discreetly into the corridor. 

This time, nobody uninvited tried to get close.

She only wished Steed could have joined her in the deserted canteen when Carson, fresh from a three-year secondment in Washington, oiled his way from the serving hatch to her table. “Mind if I join you?” he crooned, running a hand through his slicked-back black hair. Purdey pulled her tray in toward her chest.

“Not at all,” she lied smoothly. Pushing his coffee cup across the cracked Formica until it stood beside her tea, Carson let himself slouch, regarding her with a quizzical air purposely designed to raise a woman’s every hackle.

“So, Gambit’s disappeared to foreign parts, I hear,” he drawled, toying with a strand of overcooked spaghetti that dissolved from the end of his fork. “Not very _gallant_ of him. Abandoning a lady.”

She bit a sizeable chunk from her curling sandwich, withdrawing her feet to safety beneath her chair at the merest brush from his steel toecap. “We’re partners. He doesn’t have to be _gallant_. Just good.”

“Still, one might have thought…”

“He would’ve packed the little woman in his suitcase?”

He cackled, sitting a little straighter; but as the legs retreated, the hand risked a tentative advance. Purdey jerked her own into a full-scale flight from the battlefield.

“Can’t be too careful, if he’s pulling back the old Iron Curtain,” he tried, adopting the soothing tones she always thought of as _Steed with a nervous mare_. “I thought he might have asked for you as backup, given how well you apparently… combine.”

“Gambit hardly needs _backup_ , but I’m sure he’d be touched by your concern.” The words eked out around the remnant of her lunch, barely audible over the squeak of a chair being shoved aside. “He’s very good, which _may_ be why our allies asked for him. If you’ll excuse me…”

She was gone before he could react.

“Gambit would be quicker,” she told her reflection in the nearest ladies’, splashing her face with icy water from the notoriously unreliable hot tap. “Because he _is_ very good.”

 _In more ways than one_ , her treacherous mind conceded, keeping the faintest trace of a smile on her lips for the rest of her lunch break.

*

She returned the intercepts midway through the afternoon, choosing a moment when most bored agents would be absorbed in coffee and crosswords. For the most part, her luck was in.

Only Larry Carrington loitered suspiciously in the corridors, his smoothly regular features lighting up at her approach. “Purdey! I’ve been hoping to catch you,” he exclaimed, breaking into a jog toward her.

“And now you have,” she teased. Carrington cackled.

“I cannot tell a lie. Titherington told me you’d promised to have his priceless manuscript back before three,” he admitted softening the confession with a flourishing bow. “And I heard through the grapevine...”

“That no longer will you be mine?” she sang as they fell into step. He hooted loud enough to be heard three floors away.

“Or that your _looming shadow_ has upped and offed to foreign parts,” he corrected, dropping a hand to her elbow. Purdey’s smile drooped. “And that got me thinking. With Gambit off the scene for a few days, you and I might actually have some time to get to know each other.”

“In that case: how do you do? I’m Purdey.” She stuck out her hand, then her tongue in the face of his confusion. “Larry you fool, we already know each other! My mother taught me _never_ to speak to strange men.”

“And yet you ended up here.” Recovering himself quickly, he gave the waving hand a meaningful press. “And we don’t _really_ know each other. Not the way I’d like to.”

“You and half the department, apparently.”

If he felt the sting, Carrington chose to ignore it. “Well, Gambit’s quite an obstacle,” he joked, lacing his fingers through hers. Purdey retracted them firmly, shaking the offended digits out behind her back as she rocked onto her heels with head tilted to regard him.

“Yes, he does seem to have a remarkable _deterrent_ effect,” she agreed, playing up her complacency levels to maximum. “And I _knew_ there was a reason I kept him around. Thanks, Larry.”

He studied here serene expression, pleasingly unsure whether the pussycat was about to scratch or purr. “Have I been complimented or rebuffed?” he wailed. Purdey shrugged.

“Or possibly both?” she suggested brightly. He tried his most winning smile.

“I’ve not forgotten how tender you were after my brush with Juventor,” he cooed, bringing his brown head closer to hers. Purdey tucked in her chin.

“You seemed more forthcoming to me than Kendrick,” she hedged, suddenly fascinated by her own toecaps. His chuckle stirred her fringe, and it was all she could do not to recoil.

“Can’t blame a chap for having taste. Look, how about dinner tomorrow – or lunch on Saturday, if you’re going to be washing your hair?”

She drew in a breath and tried to let him down gently. “Thanks, but I do have plans.”

For a moment she thought he might take it like a gentleman. “Oh. I see,” he stammered, the façade of easy assurance wavering before his unblemished features began to harden, losing half their pleasing edge. “I thought you liked me,” he wheedled.

“I don’t _dis_ like you,” she retorted, taking a half-step down the echoing passageway toward the firmly closed doors of the document repository. Carrington matched her move with a forward stride of his own.

“But?” he challenged.

Under the circumstances, Purdey reckoned she could adopt one of two approaches: the Steed, all effusive geniality to mitigate rejection’s sting; or the Gambit, straight to the point, without the smallest danger of misunderstanding. 

What slipped from her throat could best be categorised as _the Purdey_ : a halfway house that merged the latter’s directness with the smallest _soupcon_ of the former’s affable _savoir-faire_. “Well, you’re a very handsome man, and I’m flattered, but I’m afraid you’re not _quite_ my type.”

“No?” When his eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared, he wasn’t quite the matinee-idol he imagined, either. “May I ask…”

“Well, you’re rather _pretty_ ,” she critiqued, trying not to remember her more appreciative pronouncements during the embassy stakeout. “And you’re not terribly _rugged_. I like a face with a little more _character_.”

If rather less violent emotion than she watched contorting the blandly attractive one perfectly level with hers. “Have you been leading me on, by any chance?” he grated.

“No!” Outrage bristled its protective quills over embarrassment. Carrington whistled between perfectly straight white teeth.

“That little wave from Gambit’s Jag. Cooing over me at Steed’s after my rather daring escape. Laughing at my jokes, no matter how bloody awful. Calling me Larry,” he enumerated, ticking off the points on his fingers. “Are you _quite_ sure you haven’t been toying with me, Purdey?”

Careful, Purdey-girl. All that eyelash-fluttering’s going to bite you on the backside one day.

_Mike Gambit, get out of my brain!_

“Larry, I’m sorry.” Nibbling her full lower lip, she forced herself to meet the disappointed agent’s soft brown eyes. “I know I’m the most awful tease. Gambit tells me off about it, but I can’t seem to stop myself.”

“Especially when he’s around, eh?” Not one of Steed’s chosen few, but a fine agent nonetheless, he cleaved through her stuttering apologies with the cutting force of Soo Choy’s monstrous blade. “Pulling the strings of two men at once. That’s going some, even for one of Steed’s girls.”

“It’s not—”

“Like that?” he finished harshly. “That’s how it looks to me, but at least good old Gambit’s going up in my estimation. He must have the patience of a saint! Good day, Purdey.”

“Larry, I – oh, what’s the use?”

Her complaint reverberated down the narrow corridor in his wake, but Carrington didn’t glance around. 

Which meant – in her first stroke of good fortune since Gambit’s departure - there was no one to see Purdey turn, golden hair flying around her bobbing head as she came perilously close to actually banging it into the nearest available wall.

*

Three minutes later, having completed the full run-through of an extensive repertoire of pure Anglo-Saxon obscenity, she smoothed the short blonde locks, blew a long, weary breath and resumed an unsteady course for Files, the giddiness of raw relief washing over her as she identified the dark-suited figure bent diligently over an open box file at the counter.

“You don’t mind if I tuck myself away here, Mr Finder?” she asked, careful not to notice the auction catalogue not quite concealed beneath his green-striped official paperwork. The most convivial of clerks beamed, scrambling up to return her offering to its proper place.

“Not at all, my dear,” he exclaimed, loud enough to make his fussier colleague, hidden somewhere amongst the endless rows of shelves, _tsk_ indignantly. “Is there a particular file you’d care to review?”

“You keep the recent ones near your desk, don’t you?”

Finder nodded. “If you need any help…” he volunteered.

“I’ll be fine, thank you.” 1975. Berlin. A folder she’d been meaning to peek into for quite some time.

Two hours later, she was roused from her contemplation by the discreet clearing of a dust-tightened throat. “Mr Gambit’s last encounter with the Stasi does make rather _gripping_ reading,” Finder observed, as apologetic as if he, not she, were guilty of becoming completely side-tracked. “Before you met, if I remember? A brilliantly executed operation! One for the textbooks, in fact, and quite Steed-esque in its audacity.”

“Up to the point he was shot?” she asked brightly. Finder wagged a finger.

“Appalling luck,” he complained. “Two unfortunate students tried to escape on the same section, less than an hour before his attempt. Those guards are trigger-happy at the best of times. Under the circumstances…”

“He never told me that!” 

“I daresay he thought it irrelevant.” Reluctantly she placed the slim folder into the custodian’s outstretched hands, repressing a smile at his obvious reverence in replacing it as a broad-shouldered shadow fell across the threshold.

“And Gambit never makes excuses, even with full justification. Mr Finder.”

“Mr Steed.” The clerk mimed the tip of a hat in answer to the newcomer’s courteous bowler-raise. “I’m afraid I’ve quite monopolised Purdey this afternoon…”

“Not at all my dear chap, the change of scenery will have done a world of good.” Never one to be outdone in genial courtesy, Steed responded with his most benign smile. “Still, I’m sure you must be ready to secure the great repository for another evening.”

“I’m sorry, Steed.” Like a schoolgirl caught in mischief, her head dropped to her chest. Broad, weathered fingers gently raised it.

“Think nothing of it,” he said simply, leaning in to protect the admission from any lurking spy. “And I miss him too. Goodnight, Purdey.”

“’night, Steed.” It was some consolation, but Purdey was damned if she was going to admit how much she needed it.

*

“Purdey!”

She was almost at her car when he hailed her, leaning against his garish white-striped Mustang in an attitude best described as _pure and positive lurk_. “Morrison,” she greeted curtly, not breaking her stride.

“I was thinking,” he purred, ambling around to the driver’s side just as she slipped key into lock, his stubby fingers curling around her wrist. “I’m at something of a loose end tonight, and you’re…”

“Going home.” Wrenching herself free, Purdey made a point of shaking out the violated joint. Fleshy lips parted in an ingratiating smile, the wretched man took a long pace back.

“Sorry. I simply thought, as we’re both flying solo… join me for dinner?”

“You’ll be flying into the nearest wall in a minute.”

He chuckled, bending from the hip toward her. “I know rather a nice little Chinese a few streets away,” he wheedled, with what she presumed was a flirtatious wink. 

“Then you’d better go and visit her.” Giving up on the door she simply climbed into the yellow convertible, flicking key to ignition in a single move. “ _I_ am going home. Goodnight, Mister Morrison.”

“Woah, sorry!” Hands uplifted in the universal gesture of surrender, he staggered two short paces back as she revved the unfortunate vehicle far harder than the engine was built to bear. “I thought – well, you have dinner with Gambit on a regular basis…”

“Ah, but I enjoy his company.”

Lurking, she decided as he gripped the chassis and leaned in, was preferable at least to leering. “Well, you never know. If you give it a go, you might enjoy mine.”

“On the evidence to date, I doubt it.” Offering a silent thank-you to a one-time racing driver, wherever he might be, for the lesson, Purdey floored the throttle and fired herself across the car park, drowning the bark of a disappointed suitor and her own multi-lingual blasphemies beneath a satisfying burst of raw horsepower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: Purdey can’t resist appreciating other men – Carrington included – when Gambit’s around. Yet when he’s not, she seems remarkably unimpressed. I thought it was time someone called her on it!


	3. Double The Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She can swat away unwelcome attentions like so many irritating flies, but they're about to be proven the least of Purdey's worries...

“Really, Steed,” she complained the following morning, pacing the office with the controlled fury of the caged tigress. “It’s intolerable! The moment Gambit’s out of the country…”

“Flies to the honeypot?” Chin rested on steepled fingers, the senior agent tracked her progress around the room before rising, a calming hand outstretched. Purdey snorted as she brushed it away.

“Or vultures circling a kill,” she retorted, kicking the door shut with a ferocity that made him wince for stout Georgian timber. “Carson and McBain formed an honour guard _inside_ the lift this morning, and you _know_ how narrow those doors are. It’s degrading. If Gambit were here…”

“The king of the jungle?” he suggested drily. Purdey rolled her eyes.

“Some people clearly think so,” she groused, snatching the latest briefing from the foot-soldiers monitoring a certain swanky embassy. “And they call themselves _gentlemen_! Anything of interest?”

“Other than the Test Match score - no.” Matching her rueful smile, Steed subsided into his chair and picked up the offending reports. “The leak _must_ be coming from within this department. I’m beginning to fear we train our people too well.”

“One of these days, you really will have to arrest yourself.” However she tried to hang onto indignation in the face of his urbanity, Purdey acknowledged, she was doomed to failure. Flopping inelegantly into Gambit’s usual chair she picked up a red pen and began to nibble the cap, losing herself in the comings-and-goings of their much-too-real-life espionage mystery.

The shrill of the telephone made them both start. “Hello!” Steed hailed cheerfully, his smile widening at what reached her sharp ear as an indistinguishable quack. “Gambit, good to hear from you. How goes the war?”

“Coldly,” Crackling over the long-distance line, Gambit sounded as frustrated as his boss felt. “And about get chillier. Schoeppnauer’s not played an entirely straight bat with us, so I’m going to ground for a while.”

“Oh?” 

Purdey watched deep creases fold the wide brow before her, the biro’s plastic shell cracking between her clenched fingers. “Bad?” she mouthed. Steed nodded.

“He didn’t mention the top French cell that was broken up six months ago. Or if he did, I wasn’t briefed on it,” Gambit continued, oblivious to the interplay between his partners. “Mind you, if Paris wasn’t prepared to come clean…”

“How many?”

“One dead, five arrested,” the younger man confirmed grimly. “I’ve been catching up with a few unofficial contacts, you see.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Steed picked up the pen she had broken, turning the damaged implement until it bled scarlet across his thumb. “The Americans?”

“Are nervous.” As if he could see the older man’s jaw move, Gambit made a rapid correction. “All right, more nervous than usual. None of the cells affected were aware of each other’s existence, John. There’s only one explanation, and Schoeppnauer isn’t going to like it.”

“A highly-placed sleeper,” Steed diagnosed.

“Of Cromwellian proportions,” Gambit agreed, and even with just Steed’s half of the conversation to go on, Purdey could picture him.

Knitted brows; pursed lips; jaw tight and working harshly; the steely glint of pure _Gambit_ determination in his narrowed eyes. 

“A West German White Rat?”

“How many people have access to that level of intelligence? Six? Eight?”

“Certainly no more,” Steed agreed, all affability gone and the ruthlessness, usually so carefully concealed, on full display. Gambit grunted.

“And I’m supposed to brief three of them on my every move. I don’t like those odds.”

“Neither do I.” Sitting straighter, the veteran spy stared through his companion as if she were invisible, all his concentration on whatever awaited their associate beyond the Wall. “All right. I’ll handle things at this end. Do what you have to.”

“I’d prefer to rely on my own contacts, at least until I know what I’m up against,” Gambit confirmed, relief enriching every syllable. “If you’ll square things with McKay… Schoenberg and Osterreicher are bound to be in touch once I’ve disappeared.”

“I think Tommy may have something to say about cross-border co-operation, should they object to your methods,” Steed cut in soothingly. Even across the desk’s width, Purdey caught her partner’s sudden bark of laughter.

“I’ve been biting my tongue since my informant let slip,” Gambit admitted ruefully. “And thanks. How’s Purdey?”

“Oh, she’s fine.” The subject of his enquiry opened her mouth, only to shut it sharply at the swipe of Steed’s hand before her eyes. “I’m keeping her out of mischief.”

“Glad to hear it. Tell her I said hello.”

“I will.” The older man’s voice softened. “Good luck, Mike.”

“Thanks. I’m going to need it.”

In unison they rang off, the senior partner frowning deeply at the receiver under his hand. “Gambit says hello,” he informed her, forcing a cheery tone. Purdey bit her lip.

“He _could_ have had a reply,” she pointed out. Steed treated her to his most benevolent beam.

“Do you remember once accusing us of _practising telepathy_?” he asked, and briefly even she was thrown by the easy non-sequitur. Purdey nodded.

“In fact, what you saw was a demonstration of confidence between partners in the field.” Hands folded on the desk, he fixed her with an intent gaze even she couldn’t hold indefinitely. “Now, I don’t know if I could quite call it ESP, but the bond you share with Gambit goes a long way beyond basic field trust. He’s walking into a more complex situation than we imagined, and he can’t afford distractions.”

He rested a consoling hand on hers, clasped on her now-forgotten surveillance reports. “Gambit knows your voice as well as his own. If he heard any strain in it, he’d be worried. He might—”

“Become distracted?” Consciously untensing every finger in turn, she retracted her hands and twisted her mouth into a tight smile. “Thank you, Steed.”

“Let the Stasi worry about Gambit,” he said, as usual understanding far more, Purdey gathered, than she did herself. “He has a uniquely suspicious mind, and instincts to match.”

“And he’s going to need them?” The coiling snakes in her belly slithered alarmingly. “Steed…”

“I ought to inform McKay of the salient points his German counterpart omitted to mention,” he said, turning grim despite his best efforts. “And perhaps you might join the cordon around a certain embassy?”

“A distraction?” she suggested drily. 

“A more productive outlet for your energies,” he corrected, a guiding hand already at her elbow. “I’m sending Carson to join them, but I’m sure he’d be happy to have you along.”

“Oh, I’m sure he would.” Gambit would have identified the grating at the edge of the words, but if Steed shared their absent friend’s sensitivity, he was blithely unprepared to admit it. With a gusty sigh, Purdey snatched up her little black clutch bag and permitted herself to be steered toward the lift. “If you hear from him…”

“You’ll be the first to know,” he pledged, the palpable sincerity making her eyeballs sting. “Good hunting, Purdey. We’ve a mole of our own to unearth.”


	4. Now Swing Your Partner Round And Round

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Partnerships are tricky things. A good one is hard to find. Purdey is coming to appreciate this fact.

He was waiting in the lobby, one eye fixed complacently on his blurred reflection in the stainless steel of the reinforced doorframe. Lounging casually, hands in the pockets of his Savile Row jacket, without a single glossy hair out of place as he butted his hip against the security officer’s desk. 

Purdey had found another tall, dark-haired agent loitering there many times, foot tapping impatiently as she deliberately dawdled her approach. Felt another pair of eyes, the ever-changing blue-green of the summer oceans, flicking from blonde bob to coloured heels and back. 

The effect on her mood, she observed dispassionately, was diametrically opposed on the current occasion.

Gambit’s attention focussed entirely on her. Where Carson kept a self-satisfied eye on his impeccable reflection, he would be supremely indifferent to the way the morning’s drizzle had affected his hair, a wicked, flirtatious smile dancing at the corners of his mouth as she approached with hands behind her back, lest they disobey her brain’s command and reach to smooth the delightfully disordered curls. And while his once-over would be no subtler than the present observer’s, it would be amused. Almost – if the word wasn’t absurd in connection with Mike Gambit – innocent.

“I know I’ve been out of the field game for a while, but I thought the objective of covert surveillance was to be _un_ obtrusive,” Carson drawled, pushing himself off the desk to loom closer, his smile too slack around the jaw for comfort. “Don’t get me wrong, the little red number’s a winner, but…”

_He_ had offered a similar sartorial critique while awaiting the Unicorn, Purdey recalled, barely noticing the extended arm she shucked away. It had been teasing. Affectionate. Inoffensive.

All words she suspected did not enter the Carson English Dictionary. “Shall we go?” she said brusquely, the last syllable shooting up an octave at the unfamiliar sensation of a flat palm drifting close to her buttock. 

_Gambit wouldn’t put his hand there._

Carson held the passenger door open, pausing while she settled into the padded bucket seat. Waiting, she gathered, for a compliment, on either his manners or his wheels. 

Giving neither, she tapped a glossed nail against her watch. “Unless you want me to drive…” 

He did at least have the grace to blush, and again she was struck by the contrast. 

_Gambit never does that, either._

*

The next day was Merrington’s turn, Carson’s offer to pick her up from home having been rejected with her frostiest smirk. “The naval attaché’s secretary,” he told her, yanking a massive, unsubtle Mercedes straight into the worst of the traffic flow. “Morrison trailed him halfway ‘round central London yesterday, then lost him in the behind St Paul’s. We’ll show him how the pros do it, eh?”

“If you keep your eyes on the road, we might stand a better chance,” she pointed out, tart as the canteen’s lemon curd. Merrington sniggered.

“You shouldn’t be so beautiful, then,” he schmoozed, the fingers curved around the Merc’s chunky gearstick twitching with every word. “I don’t know how Gambit hasn’t got himself killed.”

“Discipline.” The hand inched its way toward her thigh, and coolly Purdey plucked it clear, wrapping it back around the approved object with crushing force. Merrington’s bloodless lips disappeared.

“He does say you’ve the kick of an angry mule,” he commented, brakes a-squealing around the corner into the elegance of the embassy district. “That’s our man – grey suit, briefcase, ginormous horn-rimmed spectacles. Personal experience?”

“Can be arranged.” Her foot was itching. Merrington let out a bray that, had all the windows not been open, might have deafened her. 

“Smart,” he approved. 

“He’s that, too. Next left!” 

He was at least more amenable to instruction than her usual partner, responding with an alacrity that made her sway with the force of the big car’s abrupt direction-change. And he took her teasing, when their lead’s destination proved to be a small café advertising _home-made celebration cakes to order_ , in good part, even entering the establishment for eclairs at her not-entirely-serious request. “Back to the embassy?” she suggested, swiping an extra blob of cream from his to smear over hers. Merrington grinned.

“Oh, the joys of being a real-life Bond,” he groused, considering retaliation then thinking better of it in favour of a speedy return to their appointed station. “I hope Gambit’s having better luck, wherever he is.”

“Knowing Gambit, he’s making his own luck.”

A sandy brow cocked. “You’ve not heard…”

“Nor do I expect to.” She had asked, but even Mike Gambit couldn’t illegally enter a hostile state, trace a highly-placed double-agent, expose him, and be home in time for breakfast. “Solo missions are confidential between the agent and his controller.”

Merrington winked. “I can quote the rulebook too, but you and Gambit are tight. Don’t tell me he doesn’t tell you…”

“He’ll _tell me_ exactly how brilliant he was, when it’s all over,” she conceded, oblivious to the fondness twisting the words. “Are you going to finish your éclair?”

Rolling his eyes, Merrington did the decent thing. “Be my guest,” he said tiredly. Purdey beamed.

“Thank you. I will.”

*

They remained in place until dusk; trailed their man home to an anonymous apartment block; and sat outside with a large portion of chips until the light went out in his window. Only then did Merrington stretch his spine with a painful crack and slant her a small, hopeful smile. “Give you a lift home, as we’re on watch again tomorrow?” he volunteered.

“All right.” He’d taken the hint, and while he wasn’t the most stimulating of conversationalists, he did at least listen to her replies. In comparison to the available alternatives, he was actually tolerable.

It was an unpleasant surprise, therefore, when he made a much too casual enquiry late on the next interminable day. “You trained as a dancer, I hear?”

“Potted history. Royal Ballet. Too tall. Care to pass the marshmallows?”

Merrington obliged, making an audacious raid for a fluffy pink blob on the way. “Impressive,” he admitted, hunching his neck through a stunted bow. “I can’t boast a formal background, but I’m a bit of a hoofer myself. How about moving onto the disco once we’ve got Comrade Makarov tucked up tonight?”

“No, thanks.” The packet crackled between her fingers, but Purdey kept the demurral light, somehow. “I never mix business with pleasure,” she added when he seemed inclined to press.

He groaned, unbuckling his seatbelt. “What about those famous _late nights down the disco_ with Gambit?” he purred, slithering like a particularly skinny serpent across the protective barrier of the handbrake. “What category do they come under?”

“Pleasure.” Purdey arched her back, raising her chin against the defensive prickle of anger down her spine. “And I’ve had experts attempting to intimidate me, Mr Merrington: so kindly move out of my personal space before I invade yours, with _very_ hostile intent.”

“Sorry, sorry.” He backtracked at racing pace, palms upraised. “Obviously, I’ve misread the signs.” 

“I should say you have.” Indignation protecting her from the embarrassment that gleamed in a sheen of sweat across his thin top lip, she folded her arms across her chest and scowled through the windscreen toward their target building. “Perhaps we should return to business?”

His grunt was the last sound either of them emitted until he deposited her in the Ministry car park, just as the bells of Big Ben chimed eleven. 

“Oh, well,” she muttered, hopping aboard the little yellow two-seater without bothering to use the door. “Back to Carson tomorrow. I must remember to wear trousers!”

*

A suit of armour might have been better, she decided as the days meandered one into the next. Merrington avoided her. Carson complimented her _fabulous pins_. And Morrison, as discreet as the Thames foghorn, gallantly stepped forward to offer himself as her companion in an intercept based on observations of Andrei Mikhailovich Makarov’s daily routine.

“I don’t suppose _you_ can spare an hour to stroll around Hyde Park?” she asked plaintively, perching on the edge of his desk and plucking the pen from his fingers. Steed flashed an apologetic smile.

“I wish I could,” he confided, his seriousness betrayed by the deepening of the crows’ feet expanding at the corners of his eyes. “ _Herr Doktor_ Osterreicher is on the brink of a very noisy nervous breakdown. Herr Schoenberg threatens to descend on Whitehall in person; and Herr Schoeppnauer flatly refuses to accept that the Ministry would sanction an undercover operative’s illegal entry into the Worker’s State without official clearance--”

“In triplicate,”

“From himself.”

“So, he’s still over the Wall.”

“And lying low.” The satisfaction enriching his affirmation matched the warm glow that spread through Purdey’s innards. “Our grand Teutonic _rat_ must feel the trap closing by the hour.

“I wish,” he added, all pleasure drained away, “that the Slavic version closer to home was in a similar condition! Makarov is our best lead. I need my best available agent to watch him. And that, I’m afraid…”

“Thanks for the compliment.” Bolstered less by his paternal confidence than the news from foreign shores, Purdey slipped down from the desk and snatched her bag, crossing the long strap over her chest so the leather rested flush against her body in the modern woman’s equivalent of the medieval breastplate. “Morrison it is, then.”

The park was quiet. Unsurprisingly, given the constant, soaking drizzle that seeped through her clothes, matching pace with the prickling edge of discomfort that emanated from a powerfully-muscled arm around Purdey’s shoulders. “If we can head him off at The Serpentine,” Morrison breathed, the words clammy against her dripping crown, “we’ll have a clear view of his usual bench. And can’t you at least _try_ to relax? You’re stiff as a concrete post! I’m not about to pull a move under the cover of operational necessity.” 

Purdey dredged up a sickly smile. “You’re right. You’re not,” she said sweetly, shrugging the dead weight across her shoulders. “The bridge?”

“The bridge,” he agreed, picking up his pace to match her urgent strides. “We’re _supposed_ to have all the time in the world,” he reminded her. Purdey tutted.

“But we haven’t, if he’s punctual,” she retorted, ducking her chin and increasing her pace. Morrison swore under his breath, but went with her.

At the midpoint of the bridge he tugged her to a stop, tucking her snugly into the crook of his arm. “Don’t tell me you’ve never played this game with good old Gambit,” he growled, fingertips pressing into her jawbone until she was compelled to meet his eyes. “I’ll bet he suggests it, every chance he gets.”

“It’s a bit corny,” she objected, forcing the memory of another bridge, another damp day, to the back of her mind. “And Gambit’s very good at boundaries,” she added, flicking the index finger that crept down from neckline toward nipple off-course. “You should try them sometime.”

“Gambit and boundaries, that’s a good one.” Something she didn’t care for vibrated through the supposed jest and her head fell back naturally, narrowed eyes fixed with fascination for the first time on her companion’s lantern-jawed, flattish face. “I know he’s a friend and all that, but come on! It’s common knowledge the man’s a serial womaniser.”

“A ladies’ man, perhaps.” And now she was shielding Mike Gambit against a charge of sexual license. The age of miracles had truly dawned, Purdey decided grimly, and she would make the defendant pay for it, someday. “There _is_ a difference.”

“Is there?” 

“A ladies’ man makes every woman he spends time with feel like a lady,” she explained, as patient as if she was attempting to train a particularly slow puppy. “Whereas a womaniser – left hand north please, before I break it – makes a lady feel like a steak on a slab. Here he comes!”

Instinctively he spun her toward him, his head down, lashes shielding his intent concentration on the ordinary businessman shrivelling beneath a black umbrella on the way toward the first bench beside The Long Water. Purdey coughed gently, expelling the cloying scent of cheap cologne from her lungs. Struggling to arrange herself with pelvis back and neck unbent, while another place and time swam before her watering eyes.

Gambit’s aftershave, to which she was more partial than he ever needed to know, had a faint woodsy tang that merged nicely with the underlying muskiness of the man himself. More than once in close proximity Purdey had felt it tickling her nostrils, tantalising her with wisps of decidedly impure thought. 

On that particular day in Canada, he’d been wearing a thick woollen cardigan that scratched pleasantly against her cheek when he cradled her, and the dampness hanging in the air had pulled the waves of his black hair into a mass of thick curls that simply called out to feminine fingers. Holding still against the exquisite discomfort his closeness unleashed had proven the one form of torture Purdey had experienced that no Ministry training course could begin to prepare her for.

And yet, he had been calm. Professional. Utterly unmoved by the pressure of her breasts against his chest, or her breath on the side of his neck. Amused, curse him, by the delicious unease she couldn’t quite conceal. 

It was, beyond compare, her most cherished memory of their Canadian trip. Cosseted by Gambit’s protective warmth (and his properly placed hands) she had left him to handle the observation and allowed herself to luxuriate unimpeded in all the conflicting emotions that summed up their maddening, marvellous relationship. 

Crackling erotic excitement, and complete security. Thrilling uncertainty combined with serene confidence, all bound up in a single mischievous embrace.

A world away from the reek of cheap cologne and the painful bulge of an over-developed bicep against her lower back. Swallowing the urge to gag, Purdey eased her aching head away from the crook of his neck – Gambit, those few crucial inches taller, fit her so much better – and twisted, straining for a glimpse of their target. “Nobody’s coming,” Morrison grated.

“Really?” Behind the broad gravelled pathway, branches shifted. A slim figure, bowler hat pulled low over the brow, broke through the undergrowth, striding by the Russian diplomat’s soggy picnic without a glance, even as the newspaper tucked at the crook of his elbow slipped messily to the ground.

“Let’s go.” Before Makarov could collect his consignment, Morrison’s arm had dropped, his demeanour changing. Purdey gulped a cleansing breath and grabbed his arm, aware of the sizzling heat of adrenaline catching fire in her veins. Finally, something felt normal. _Right._

*

They followed him beyond the park gates, ducking into Morrison’s Mustang until the bowler-hatted mole had hailed a cab and passing on the pursuit to Carson, waiting behind the wheel of a grimy white Range Rover on the Whitehall road.

“He’s one of ours, all right,” the other man confirmed gloomily when they convened around Steed’s desk, with Merrington and – to make Purdey’s day even brighter – Larry Carrington called in for support. “I tailed him into the backstreets behind the Ministry, but he’s good. He got away.”

“If he’s one of ours, he’s bound to be good,” Purdey pointed out. “Really, Steed, you must stop _training_ your people so well.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” He appreciated her levity, even if it earned censorious glances from elsewhere. “But if he _is_ one of our own – a Ministry man – we’ll have to employ the Gambit method.”

“The Gambit method?” Carson enquired, and Purdey gathered she wasn’t alone in identifying a sudden drop in the ambient temperature. She laughed.

“Suspect everyone. The farther above suspicion, the better,” she quoted softly, holding Steed’s eye long enough to catch its appreciative glint. “No more partner work? Or shall we travel in threes?”

“Or perhaps,” the senior agent interrupted, absently reaching for the grey bowler strategically located atop his personal filing cabinet. “You shan’t know until I tell you. Thank you, gentlemen. Purdey, if you wouldn’t mind…”

“Not at all.” Her heart leapt for an instant, only to sink at the tiniest shake of his dark head. “It’s not Gambit,” she diagnosed sadly.

“I’m afraid not: but it _is_ the next-best thing.”

“You’re taking me to dinner?”

He smiled, genuinely, for the first time all week. “In the absence of the most unapologetically sceptical of our departmental sceptics, I’m asking the person who knows him best. Where would Gambit’s money be?” he corrected, deadly serious behind a teasing tone. Purdey threw up her hands.

“I’m not sure even Mike could guess this one,” she admitted miserably. “But I’d feel better if he were here to try! Do you want me solo tomorrow? I can haunt the corridors. See what there is to be seen. Oh, and Steed?”

“Yes?” Paused in the act of retrieving his brolly, he raised a questioning brow.

“When you get home, check there isn’t a bowler missing. I’d hate to think a traitor was using one of yours.”


	5. Suspect In Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a lead at last. Usually, for Purdey, it would all be so simple now...

Solo. In groups. Occasionally, even in pairs. The department was functioning differently, and to Purdey it seemed to be barely functioning at all. But finally, there was a definite lead.

Not a suspect. Not a face, or a name. Simply a footfall in the dark, dusty corridors beyond Files, and the boarding that protected an abandoned coal cellar replaced a degree or two from perfect alignment by a mole on a mission.

That it should have been Finder, the veteran record-keeper, rather than one of his highly-skilled field operatives who discovered it improved Steed’s temper not a whit.

Still, the slender silhouette was watched making a surreptitious escape. A shadow, distinguishable only by the domed crown and broad brim of a bowler hat, sighted flitting through the narrow maze of streets beyond Whitehall and the Georgian elegance of the Ministry. Bearded, Harper was able to report, and light on his feet. Neither Carrington, Morrison or Merrington, stationed along the likeliest routes, reported contact.

“Thursday,” Purdey announced, a propos of nothing. Steed pursed his lips.

“The day after Wednesday?” he volunteered. Purdey clicked her tongue.

“We know he connects with Makarov in Hyde Park on Thursday - or he has, for the two we’ve been watching. And he’s not afraid to take a risk. He thinks he’s one step ahead.”

“Largely, one imagines, because he is.” Steed lay back in his seat and closed his heavy eyes, momentarily revealing every one of the twenty-five and more years he held over her. “But you’re quite right, of course. Yourself and Carson – wrong build, he can’t be our man – should be in position early. And if possible…”

“No guns.” The horror of it froze her blood, but Purdey squared her shoulders, forcing herself to match his public equanimity. “Whoever he is, we’ll bring him in alive.”

*

“At least it’s dry.” After two hours hunched amid the bracken that tangled to the rear of Makarov’s bench, her leather jacket scraped and her hair adorned with fallen leaves, Purdey’s enthusiasm for her job was at an all-time low. She only hoped the restless presence of a perma-tanned dandy more worried about his handmade Italian boots than the imminent possibility of exchanging gunfire with a traitorous colleague at the heart of a public park might be accepted as a mitigating factor when she made her final report.

“And busy,” Carson muttered, leaking the words from the corner of his mouth. “Still, could be worse. The view’s pretty good.”

“Not from where I’m sitting,” she hissed. He had the raw nerve to chuckle.

“No wonder Gambit gets around so much,” he murmured, knowing from the involuntary tightening of her pupped lips when the shot struck home. “Working full-time with you must be hell on the ego.”

“You’ll never know, will you?” _And if the Ministry loses an operative to gunfire today, it might not be the one Steed’s expecting._

“Stepped on a corn? Sorry.”

“It usually helps,” she informed him acidly, “to sound like you mean it. Look left!”

“That’s our man.” Their cover shifted as Carson shuffled his feet apart, balancing himself for the impending strike. “You take Makarov.”

Arranging herself into a crouch, Purdey nodded. “Ready,” she breathed.

Then all hell broke loose. 

Carson erupted through the undergrowth, brambles swishing like claws in his wake as Purdey flung herself at the bewildered Russian, shooting out a glancing blow that knocked his glasses to the gravel before he could think to react. 

Close by she could hear the guttural grunts of men in well-matched combat, interspersed with the sickening thud of falling blows. More distant, like the irate buzz of a toppled beehive, the low, keening hum of public alarm was sliced by the odd panicked scream. 

Irrelevant, all of it. Focussed on her target she ducked, swayed and unleashed an arrow-straight blow, treating her snarling opponent to a feral smile. Dazed, his guard went down. His chin followed suit, and with the powerful flick of one perfectly-pointed foot, she sent him sprawling, unconscious across his favourite picnic site.

Purdey whipped to her partner’s aid. And froze, her pose the mirror of his. 

Still as marble, mouth open and hands limp, Carson gawked while the cause of the whole embarrassingly public scrimmage, _sans_ bowler, barged through the thickest knot of bystanders, trampling an old dear and her poodle on the way. “Get after him!” she bellowed, throwing herself head-first through the throng. “Carson! Come on!”

“That way!” a small, red-haired boy screeched shrilly, the finger he meant to point waving every which way in his excitement. “’e’s gone through them bushes! Mum, can I go?”

“Not this time, sonny!” The statue mutated into a charging rhino, expensive shoes forgotten in the rush to make amends. Slithering on ground still sodden from the wettest May in a decade, Carson blundered by with arms outstretched, each successive branch-slap to the face calling forth another audible obscenity. “Purdey, the car! Call in fast, they can head him off at the gates!”

*

“They couldn’t.” For the first time in a long and distinguished career within the Ministry walls, John Steed’s clenched fist made brutal contact with unyielding mahogany. Purdey flinched on the desk’s behalf. “What were you _thinking_? You had the better of him. You had the element of surprise…”

“Sorry, Steed.” Hunched into Gambit’s chair, chin buried deep in his barrel chest, Neil Carson looked no bigger than that bolshie schoolboy yanking on his mother’s hand, all his cocksure polish stripped away. “I got, erm, distracted. Those _legs_ …”

“Oh, for goodness sake!” Another man – Purdey could have named him quite easily – would have cursed the proverbial coloured streak, and given that Steed refrained, she longed to herself in his absence. “There’s a time and a place, and the middle of an ambush is not it. Purdey…”

“It’s never happened with Gambit,” she snapped, her smouldering temper only rekindled by the miscreant’s apologetic snuffle. “And with your permission, I’ll work solo until he gets back. I wouldn’t want a death on my conscience because I have legs.”

Neither man darted a glance at them, which was, she supposed, a manner of progress. “Thank heaven you weren’t wearing a skirt,” Steed murmured, and for a moment the third wheel was forgotten by two good friends sharing a very old joke. “And one must look for positives. Our mole will be frightened, and frightened agents make mistakes.

“Carson, you may consider yourself removed from the case, and any other, until further notice.” His pleasant baritone hardened. “I might also recommend that you remove yourself from my sight, before the presence of a lady ceases to serve as a restraint on my baser nature.”

“I’ll be on my way then, shall I?” she suggested brightly. “Really, Steed, you mustn’t be so—”

“Gallant?” he supplied, matching her grin behind the escaping agent’s broad back before both sagged, disappointment leaving them exhausted. “We ought to have another look at those intercept reports. Oh, and keep this under your hat…”

“Or yours?” she quipped, snatching the weighted brown bowler and planting it firmly on her cocked head. 

“Or mine,” he agreed, with the tip of its imaginary twin. “McKay has authorised a departmental outbreak—"

“Of bugs? Not before time.” A purpose. A distraction from the sickening mix of adrenaline and anger still coursing through her veins. Purdey doubted she had ever needed it more. “I’ll get that file, shall I?”

*

He hit Files with the force of a Category 4 storm, scattering clerks and papers in all directions, before she could reclaim the required documents from Titherington at his most obstructive. “We’ve an incoming message. Restricted frequency,” he announced, taking a firm grip on her elbow. Purdey’s heart jumped straight to the back of her throat.

“Berlin?”

“Not quite.” Just on the proper side of an outright sprint, Steed directed her from the dust of the repository to the sterility of the communications room, homing in immediately on the one rapid, insistent set of bleeps that mattered. “Have you got a fix?” he demanded.

“Northern Germany. The border area.” Never taking her eyes from the pad, her pen scratching hard to keep pace, the curvy, russet-haired operator addressed nibbled lightly on a full lower lip. “It’s definitely him, sir. I’ve transcribed him often enough to know Mr Gambit’s rhythm.”

“On the Morse key?” Purdey asked sweetly, disdainfully familiar with the tell-tale flush and the dancing eyes. Steed cleared his throat.

“Ask if he’s drawn the curtain,” he instructed, flicking a warning glance of purest steel her way. The girl’s finger played over her key.

The momentary pause before he replied with a quickfire series of dashes and dots seemed to stretch into eternity. “Curtain closed.” she reported. “Undamaged.”

Purdey let out the breath she hadn’t realised she was holding. Steed’s broad shoulders softened infinitesimally.

“No transfusions this time,” she murmured, meeting his eyes. He almost smiled.

“Ask if he needs backup,” he commanded, transferring a hand from the back of the operator’s chair to her shoulder.

The brusque response needed no translation, but she gave it anyway. “No,” she stated, over another speedy string of code that somehow managed to ooze all Gambit’s trademark cocky good humour. “Gnaws... is getting close… to the trap.”

“Gnaws?” Steed mouthed. Purdey snickered.

“Giant rat,” she mouthed back. The senior man rolled his eyes.

“Gambit’s suggestion, one assumes,” he murmured, positively glinting with repressed mirth. Purdey shuddered delicately.

“Who else would be that corny?”

“Mr Steed.” Lifting her chestnut head, the pretty stenographer turned toward them, her features scrunched into what Purdey at least deemed a most unappealing pout. “He’s spelled it _T-R-A-P-P_ , sir,” she wailed, fixing a limpid gaze on him, as if the great John Steed might hold the key to the universe. “It’s definitely _trap_ , but…”

“Could be a mistake?” Purdey suggested. Steed shook his head.

“Gambit doesn’t make mistakes.”

“And it was a definite key-strike.” Half the duty stenographers had gathered around as the conversation progressed, and the supervisor’s strident intervention garnered a whisper of agreement among the rest. “Mistakes stand out, sound fumbled. I don’t know what it means, but Mr Gambit intended to spell it that way.”

“Purdey?”

All eyes turned expectantly to her. “It’s one of his awful in-jokes, I suppose,” she said slowly, half-closing her eyes to better envisage the sly smirk on familiar handsome features as Gambit tapped his cryptic clue, entirely unconcerned that his partners would be left baffled. Steed beamed. 

“I imagine he’ll let us in on it eventually,” he agreed genially. “And in the meantime, I’m happy to hear he’s in such good spirits. Wish him good hunting.”

The radio operator tapped a brief message, receiving an instant rejoinder. “Thanks,” she reported. “I’ll be in touch.”

Purdey was certain she didn’t imagine the sigh that rippled through the group of mainly young women at her back. She opened her mouth, an acid comment already trickling down her tongue, when another voice, shrill with urgency, cut it dead.

“Mr Steed! I’m picking up a transmission on a known frequency, sir.”

“Where is it?” Gambit forgotten, Steed whipped to face the new threat, brow furrowing as he tried to make sense of the ponderous succession of beeps that trilled across the room. The pallid blonde scowled at her notepad. 

“Close,” she announced. He tapped his fingers together, almost in imitation of the incoming signal.

“Too close to get a fix?” he suggested quietly. “Central London?”

“The embassy,” Purdey identified, launching herself to peer at the operator’s jottings. He nodded.

“Will arrange… transport. The Marshal, fifteen-fifteen. Point two.”

She sat back, setting the headphones aside. “That’s it, sir.”

“The Marshal?” Purdey wondered. Steed’s finger-snap resounded round the cavernous basement like a gunshot.

“Zhukov!” he exclaimed, triumphant. “Their naval attaché’s name is Commander Zhukov. It’s straight from the KGB—”

“School of Subtle Code-Names?”

He grinned like a naughty child: an expression, Purdey reflected, she had seen mirrored all too often on a younger, leaner set of features. “Quite. Fifteen-fifteen. Half an hour.”

“I’ll get over there.” Excitement flared in her veins, flushing her face and brightening her eyes to match the crystal glint of his. Steed stepped aside with a flourish, granting her a clear run to the door.

“Morrison’s on watch,” he said, dropping into her wake as she passed. “I’ll contact him. And Purdey…”

“No diplomatic incidents,” she finished for him, bolting for the stairs in preference to awaiting the notoriously chugging lift. Puffing slightly, Steed jerked his head.

“I want our man alive. Unless he intervenes, let theirs run.”

She seized her coat from the lobby and snapped a Gambit-esque salute, squelching a sudden surge of longing for the man himself on her sprint down the Ministry steps. Dodging the suits and the tourist groups, she ran the length of Whitehall and on, past elegant Georgian architecture to the leafy grandeur of the embassy district, slowing to a jog only when her target – and the lurid green Mustang parked down the road – came into sight.

Morrison stood beside the car, elbows propped casually on the roof as he pretended to study the racing pages. “No movement yet,” he muttered from the side of his mouth as she dawdled by. “Can’t be going far.”

“Six minutes past.” Shouldering a convenient lamp post, she appeared thoroughly preoccupied with a stone inside her left shoe, using the length of her thick fringe to shield her focus on the embassy doors. “There!”

Casually he folded his newspaper and tossed it through the Mustang’s narrow window, whistling softly to himself as he locked the car and began to amble after the frowning naval attaché. Purdey crossed the street, matching her pace to his while the diplomat, never glancing behind, stayed just shy of a jog, checking his watch every few seconds.

Away from the wider main road, down a side-street and left again, the two agents brought shoulder to shoulder in pursuit. “He’s heading for the embassy garage,” Morrison muttered, gripping her arm hard enough to burn. “Has to be.”

“Head him off?” 

He took off at a run, leaving her to shadow the spymaster: barely daring to breathe and placing each foot with exaggerated care. Pressing her back to the brickwork she inched closer as he neared his destination, one hand sliding against all her brain’s instruction into the special pocket where her pistol fit invisibly. Then she heard it.

A voice. Low, urgent and rasping, cut by the attaché’s staccato reply. Risking a peep around the corner she spied her target’s slender silhouette, topped with a bowler’s dome. And she ran.

“Don’t move!” she yelled, a blur at the edge of her vision identifiable as the burly shape of Morrison rocketing over the garage wall, arm already drawn back to deliver the opening blow. The mole dodged, charging straight for her and, bracing herself, Purdey delivered it in his stead, her acute senses picking up the whoosh of air disturbed by a prudent diplomat’s sprint for the nearest sanctuary. His sleeper lunged at her again and she danced by him, lashing out with an expert chop as she went. He grunted, staggered and fell back into Morrison’s extended arms.

They tightened as Purdey swiped the writhing prisoner’s legs from under him, already reaching to yank the bushy thickness of false beard from his chin. With a painful _zzziiippp_ it tore free of his burning jaw, leaving hers to hit the floor under recognition’s sickening strike. 

“Merrington!”

Over his shoulder, Morrison spat a particularly virulent oath. “Cuffs?” he snapped.

Purdey obliged on instinct, the snap of metal drowned by the double-agent’s groan as his arms were very deliberately wrenched again. “Steed’s not gonna like this,” she predicted dully.

“Feel free to give him a call.”

_Mike Gambit, I never knew how much I could miss you!_ “You’re not going to assert your seniority?” she asked hopefully. Morrison snorted, giving his quiescent prisoner’s arm another painful tug.

“You’re the heiress to Gale, Peel and King,” he pointed out, naked resentment sounding even more ridiculous in his deep, precise tones. “He might take it better from you. Anyway, I’ve got my hands full.”

“All right.” Gambit might make a fuss, but he would at least sigh and shoulder his responsibilities like a man. “Car keys? Unless you’re planning to walk him back through Whitehall.”

“Back pocket.” He risked a slack smirk over his captive’s head. Rolling her eyes, Purdey ground her teeth and moved in to retrieve them.

“If he wasn’t in the way, I’d make you regret that,” she growled, turning on her heel before he could find a pithy reply.


	6. The King Of The Jungle?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The double-agent is down. The Ministry’s in shock. Close the file, Steed says, but there’s one thing Purdey needs to help her snap it shut.

Steed liked it even less than she expected, but at least took the sensational news with his usual controlled aplomb. By the time Purdey had finished her initial paperwork and obtained permission to leave for the evening, her head was aching as much from the constant hum of whispering in her wake as from bending double over a desk enveloped in a cloud of her temporary partner’s choking cologne.

Merrington. A traitor. 

One of their own. The field staff’s worst nightmare.

“You have to close the file.” Steed reiterated his mantra when she flopped down before him the next morning, rubbing eyes dulled by a sleepless night. “He’s in the past. Move on. You’ve dealt with moles in the Ministry before.”

“Never in the operational team,” she argued, picking up a pen and spinning it uselessly between her fingers. “It feels _different_.”

“It does,” he allowed, resting his chin on steepled fingers. “But one rotten apple won’t spoil the barrel. You can’t start second-guessing every member of the department, because--”

“That’s your job?”

He flinched. “Sorry,” she muttered. Steed clicked his tongue.

“Never apologise for being right, my dear,” he said sadly. “I joke about having to arrest m’self, yet never believed one of my own stable… You did well, by the way. Morrison was most impressed.”

“ _And_ he didn’t ogle me _too_ obviously.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” He matched her grim smile. “Merrington’s said nothing yet, but our interrogators will have everything from him by the end of the day.”

Cold enveloped her, a Siberian gust brought on by a single thought. “He asked me about Mike.”

“I imagine they all have, in a manner of speaking.” Caught up in his musings, it took an uncharacteristic extra second for her meaning to hit home and Steed sat heavily back, eyeing her anxiously. “You didn’t...”

“I didn’t.” Icy water dribbled down her spine. An unthinking word; a casual quip. She could have betrayed Gambit’s entire operation without realising. “And you’re right, of course. Carson; Morrison; even Carrington. They’ve all mentioned him.”

“Jealousy can be a very ugly thing,” Steed told her lightly. “And Gambit is handsome, talented, and blessed with an exceptional young woman as his partner. His absence will be noticed.”

“In more ways than one.” Absently reviewing her own report of the previous day’s escapade, Purdey willed her wayward thoughts back from another, highly improper, Gambit-related path. 

She only wished she were capable of keeping them away.

*

McKay. The Minister. Several insufferable under-secretaries. Everyone wanted to hear, first-hand, how the double-agent had been taken. Even those who had access to all the forms diligently filled out, signed and countersigned in triplicate, seemed determined to join the queue outside Steed’s office.

If they really wanted the inside scoop, Purdey considered, they ought to have secreted themselves in the off-duty lounge. She couldn’t remember a day when so many of Her Majesty’s highly-trained secret agents had so little to fill their time beyond gossip in its corners.

She tried to avoid it, but eventually the call of a wet, hot drink that couldn’t legitimately be called _tea_ without breaching trades descriptions legislation was too great. Carefully stretching her spine, Purdey stumbled down the stairs, blocking her ears to the whispers of Merrington, and her nerve endings to the crawling sensation of eyes on the back of her legs as she strode through the over-populated halls.

“Purdey! I thought you’d gone into hiding.”

“Morrison.” With a curt nod she bypassed the loitering agent, ignoring his uncurling smirk as he dropped into her lee. “Busy,” she added defensively.

“Aren’t we all, with Merrington’s workload to take on?” When she would have moved away, he blocked her path, one hand on the machine to effectively trap her in the corner between it and the wall. “But all work and no play makes Purdey a dull girl…”

“If you find me boring, you’ll be glad to let me pass,” she purred. His feet shifted. Giving him a stronger base, she noticed critically, against her first, testing shove.

“Oh, you’re far from boring.” With his feet firmly planted and his upper body swinging toward hers, she was trapped as effectively as any foreign spy had ever been. Purdey shrank back, holding her breath against the clamminess of his exhale against her face. Rapidly calculating the exact angle of attack for maximum effect, then discarding it.

Steed had lost one of his team to treachery. It wasn’t the time to put another out of action through GBH. “Come on, girl! I think we made quite a team.”

“Clearly you’ve never worked well with a partner,” she grated. Morrison cackled.

“Dinner, tonight?” he suggested, staying just the right side of an outright leer even with her wriggling, desperately seeking a non-violent means of escape. “We’ve got a lot to celebrate.”

“I’d hardly call unmasking a traitor in our own office a cause for _celebration_ ,” she shot back, the words ice-encrusted despite the fiery frustration that raised her voice. “Now, are you going to take a step back, or do I have to—”

“Purdey? Everything all right?”

With every syllable from the doorway Morrison staggered a pace back, rocked as if by a quick succession of well-placed physical blows. Purdey launched herself in the voice’s direction, her bad mood dissipated by the sight of its owner in a blessedly familiar pose. 

Outwardly relaxed, one hand braced high against the doorframe, Mike Gambit focused his full, penetrating attention on the beaming woman bowling toward him, already steadying himself for her unusually touchy-feely greeting. “Everything all right?” he repeated, bringing his free arm to circle protectively around her back. Purdey’s head waggled against his shoulder.

“Everything’s fine. Absolutely fine,” she repeated giddily, watching her hand come up to graze his cheek. Morrison cleared his throat.

“I’ll be off then, shall I?” he suggested, giving them the widest possible berth granted by a narrow doorway. Gambit threw him a cocky smile, tightening his hold as he steered her out of the other man’s path.

“Don’t rush off on my account,” he said, infusing the cordiality with the menace of a flexing blade. Morrison cringed from it visibly.

“Catch you later, Purdey,” he smarmed, one eye on Gambit’s impassive face as he backed right into the opposite wall. “And – well, thanks for the loan of the partner, Gambit.”

“She’s hardly mine to loan. Or yours to give back,” Gambit growled, the harsh set of his jaw softening at her huff of obvious pleasure. “Did you miss me, Purdey-girl?”

“Of course not.” The derisive snort belied by the tell-tale shimmer in her eyes, Purdey applied hovering hand to cheek in a playful smack that only widened his already enormous grin. “When did you get in? I hadn’t heard…”

“Oh, about a minute and a half ago.” He made a show of checking his watch, its face nestled snugly against his inner wrist. “I was on my way up to see Steed when I heard raised voices and—” broad shoulders rolling through a lazy shrug “-- the training kicked in. Seriously, Purdey – _are_ you all right?”

“I am now.” Morrison couldn’t have backed off faster with his tie caught in a ten-tonne truck. Snuggling into her proper partner’s side, Purdey allowed herself a deep, cleansing lungful of his familiar scent, taking in the dark smudges under his eyes and the careful stiffness of posture that betrayed his utter exhaustion. “Are you?” she challenged.

“Knackered,” he admitted cheerfully, only to sober on closer inspection of her pinched cheeks and the puffiness of insomnia around her bright blue eyes. “Speaking of which, you’re looking a bit run-down yourself. It’s true – about Merrington?”

“Mike Gambit!” she expostulated. “You couldn’t _possibly_ know…”

Releasing her with obvious reluctance he tapped the side of his nose, a knowing gesture guaranteed to raise her every hackle. “I’ve climbed two flights of stairs and heard his name being muttered on every landing,” he said simply. “Security’s been doubled in the foyer; and I distinctly heard the word _traitor_ as I passed the typing pool. I’d be a pretty lousy secret agent if I couldn’t put clues like that together.”

“Then you’ve nothing to be smug about, have you?” Once more she tapped his cheek, desperate for some kind of contact as his arm dropped from her back and they grinned at each other from a range of inches, his dark head dipping naturally toward her fair one. 

“And neither have I,” she added more seriously. “I did surveillance on the embassy with him for two days trying to get a lead on the mole’s identity, and I was sitting beside him.”

“Yes, well that _would_ make you feel a teeny bit foolish,” Gambit allowed, eyes dancing. Purdey punched his arm. “Ow!”

“Don’t be such a baby.” Still, she gave the offended area a rub, and he brightened comically. “You ought to report to Steed.”

“Probably.” Neither moved, each preoccupied with the other’s presence. “Under the circumstances… do I need an escort?”

She pretended to consider the question, lips pursed and head cocked. “ _I_ trust you,” she conceded. “But I’ve been proven pretty gullible already, haven’t I? Come on, before he comes hunting for you.”

Everyone they passed, she noticed, kept their eyes above her shoulder line with Gambit at her side. Carson stepped aside at the stairs to allow her safe passage. McBain gave her a nod and a smile, even as he greeted her associate. Larry Carrington, to the particular satisfaction of both, merely mumbled something incomprehensible and fell through the nearest available doorway. 

All in all, Purdey concluded smugly, all was right with her world.

It got even righter when Steed bowled down the corridor toward them, brimming with an energy she hadn’t seen since their partner’s departure. “Ah, Purdey, I thought you ought to know…” he began, pulling up at the sight of that familiar slim figure at her back. “I see you’ve found him,” he added with a grin. “Gambit.”

“Steed.”

“ __He rather found _me_ ,” she corrected easily, dodging aside as the two men clasped hands in a brief, firm shake that spoke volumes. “You simply can’t help riding to the rescue, Gambit. Can you?”

Blue-green eyes that had been twinkling with mirth hardened. “Has he been pestering you?” he growled. Purdey winked.

“Some girls might be flattered, I suppose” she conceded, tucking an arm through each man’s and turning them neatly back toward the sanctuary of their office. “But I think the jungle drums will be beating by now. Don’t you, Steed?”

“I imagine they will.” Over her dipped head the senior agent flashed a genial grin in the face of Gambit’s bemusement, pausing to close the door as the younger pair moved with practised smoothness to their accustomed seats. Resuming his, Steed folded his brawny hands on the desk, regarding them with a paternal air. “And now that we’ve attended to the formalities: did your _rat_ fall obligingly into his trap?”

“He did.” 

Only Mike Gambit, she considered, would make the announcement with a straight face and sit in silence, daring the great John Steed to question. “And?” she prompted.

“McKay’ll be getting the call this afternoon. Schoeppnauer wanted to withhold the general announcement until his people could go through the relevant files.”

Her cocksure colleague was, Purdey diagnosed with surprise, actually rather torn. Pleased with himself – of course – and yet uneasy. The realisation caused an uncomfortable twang in her chest. 

Clearly, the Ministry wasn’t the only branch of Western security to have suffered a recent embarrassment.

“And?” she tried again. Gambit expelled a gusty sigh.

“The Trapp. As in, Captain von Trapp,” he said, as if that explained everything. Two pairs of eyebrows lifted. “You didn’t get it?”

“The Sound of Music?” Purdey enquired, swinging one long leg over the other and frankly revelling in his appreciative glance. “One of your girlfriends a fan?”

Gambit snorted. Steed snapped his fingers.

“Salzburg,” he exclaimed, and Purdey’s bewilderment deepened. “Austria. The Austrian!”

“Osterreicher.” She hadn’t been so shocked since…

_This time yesterday._

Gambit shrugged. “It fit with what our Ossis knew,” he said, falling casually into the cryptic terminology of the veteran Wall-crosser. “The Captain was high-up in West German intelligence, with field experience back to the fifties, but it felt _off_ , somehow. A bit too KGB—”

“School of Subtle Code-Names?” Steed suggested, before she could intervene. Gambit grinned.

“The Stasi are more into deflection and disinformation, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure until the lights went up.”

From his pocket he produced a creased image, tattered at the corners and smudged down one side from being folded before fully developed. Steed’s head snapped back as if he’d been punched.

“Schoenberg.”

“The German Steed,” Purdey quoted quietly. Gambit cleared his throat.

“Not any more,” he said.

“He’s been director of field operations for ten years.”

“Knows every West German agent on either side of the curtain.”

“Had privileged access to all NATO intelligence traffic, regardless of origin.”

“And admits to serving the other side since ‘fifty-three. And no,” Gambit added, lifting both hands in time to stop the question on his boss’s tongue. “If he hadn’t been in at the kill, I don’t think Herr Schoeppnauer would’ve believed it.”

“You got Schoeppnauer out from behind his desk?” Steed demanded, grabbing at the smallest thread of humour. “What did you use, a grenade?”

“He’d have found it less painful if I had,” Gambit muttered wryly. “The full report’s in my suitcase downstairs, if you want…”

“I’ll settle for a few pertinent facts.” Beetle-browed, Steed sat back with fingers at his lips, considering his right-hand man with an unblinking gaze. “How did you come to Schoenberg?”

“With a great deal of difficulty,” Gambit admitted, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand. “I thought I had pretty good contacts over the Wall, but none of them had more than a few biographical details on The Captain. In the end, it was the codename that got me suspicious.”

“Rather a crude deflection,” Purdey critiqued, as if he were personally responsible.

“Not very sporting,” Steed added. Gambit shrugged.

“How much more Stasi can you get?” he asked. “And it’s certainly taken the gloss off Osterrericher’s promotion. They were working together before the Wall was even a twinkle in Honecker’s eye—”

“And all the while, Schoenberg was setting him up for rather a nasty fall.” 

“And betraying every one of our cells when they got too useful.”

“He’s admitted everything?”

“Couldn’t do much else,” Gambit replied, startled. “I took a leaf out of the Flier’s book, you see. Baited a nice, juicy trap.”

“Which he stepped into in full view of his immediate superior,” Steed concluded. Gambit bit his lip.

“Schoeppnauer was the only candidate I could rule out. Career desk officer,” he added by way of explanation. With a soft grunt and a creak of bone, Steed pulled himself to his feet.

“Never parted more than his bedroom curtain, but he’s an honest man,” he acknowledged, smiling at the alacrity with which they followed his lead. “A pity there are so few of them in our profession. You won’t have heard…”

“He has,” Purdey corrected. Steed’s broad shoulders heaved beneath their beautifully-cut grey armour.

“I believe the pupil may be giving a lesson to the master,” he murmured approvingly. To the astonishment his friends, Gambit blushed.

“I doubt that,” he muttered, raven head dipped in a futile attempt to conceal his embarrassment. Steed clapped a kindly hand on his shoulder.

“Your sceptical turn of mind has been very much missed, Mike,” he said sincerely.

“And not only that,” Purdey added under her breath.

When two heads whipped toward her, she coloured higher than he had. “I needn’t fear a death on my conscience when I work with you,” she added defensively. Gambit pursed his lips.

“Is that a compliment, or an admission?” he asked their boss.

Steed grinned, a willing co-conspirator. “I wouldn’t answer on a lady’s behalf, Gambit. It wouldn’t be gallant.”

“Or safe, with the lady in question,” Purdey reminded them sternly. “I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but you, Mike Gambit, are one of the very few gentlemen in this building.”

“I’m hearing things,” he muttered, rubbing his creased brow. “Steed, did she just call me a gentleman, or have I ingested some kind of slow-acting hallucinogenic somewhere?”

“I believe she did, old chap.” Amused, the older man stepped back to survey his protégés: side by side, even the challenging tilt of their heads at a matching angle. “And I believe she may be right. Take the rest of the day off, both of you. If Schoeppnauer intends to contact McKay…”

“Nine o’clock sharp, report in hand,” Gambit promised gloomily. Purdey leaned in, offering a steadying shoulder as he swayed, exhaustion finally getting the better of his sense of duty. “Thanks, John.”

“My pleasure. Purdey…”

“I happen to know Gambit doesn’t have a car outside,” she said, so serene both men were immediately suspicious. “And I’m starving.”

“Oh no, Purdey-girl. I’m not taking you out for dinner so I can fall asleep in the main course.” Palms up in surrender, he adopted a pleading tone while backing cautiously toward the door. Hands planted on her hips, Purdey emitted a noisy tut.

“Out? Did I mention out? No, I did not,” she reprimanded, as if the very suggestion was absurd. “But there _is_ a pot of beef stew and dumplings at my place ready to be warmed, and I’ve made far too much for my tiny appetite…”

The two men shared a speaking look. “I resent that,” she told them, spoiling the objection with a brilliant smile. “You’re too tired to cook for yourself, Mike: and don’t argue with me! I know how you look after three weeks on adrenaline and caffeine.”

“Beats the standard East Berlin diet,” he quipped, not bothering to dispute her accuracy. “But that stew does sound better…”

“I can add chocolate mousse for dessert,” she offered casually, for the simple pleasure of seeing his eyes light up. Gambit smacked his lips, concealing the merest flick of a glance right under her laughter. “And you’re more than welcome to join us, Steed…”

“Thank you, but I really must go back to the country tonight.” They both had the grace – or the thespian skills – to look disappointed. “Nine o’clock sharp, Gambit?”

“Bright and early. Well, early. Can’t guarantee the bright bit.” With a cheery salute to the senior man, Gambit allowed himself to be taken firmly by the elbow and steered back out the Ministry’s teeming evening corridors.

He saw nothing unusual. People grunted in acknowledgement. Swayed aside to let them by. Carson held the lobby door. Harper waved.

To Purdey, it felt strangely disjointed. Normal, yet not. 

She curled her fingers into his firm bicep, waiting for the unpleasant crawling sensation around the calves or the laser-burn of downcast eyes through her bra. “Um, Purdey?” Gambit tried, peering down at her grim expression with alarm. “I don’t bruise easily, but…”

“Sorry.” Her nails snagged in the fibres of his corduroy jacket as she tried to retract them, giving the offended area a distracted pat. “I didn’t know how much I could miss you, Mike Gambit.”

He looked thrilled. “You’re the perfect pass-deterrent,” she added brightly, something twisting hard behind her ribs at the way his delighted expression dissolved. 

Around the department he was considered a tough man to read, which counted as a compliment. A good agent needed to play cards close to chest if he intended to survive: everyone knew that. And Mike Gambit – it had been the second thing Purdey heard about him when she joined Steed’s stable – was an exceptionally good agent.

Yet she had found his strong, handsome features ridiculously decipherable, right from the start. It would have been a feather in the new girl’s cap, if he hadn’t been able to read her just as clearly.

As they climbed into her convertible – she opening the driver’s door, he merely vaulting over the passenger’s – she watched his jaw tighten and his eyes narrow, taking on the menacing glint she associated with things getting very, very nasty for whoever he happened to deem deserving. “Have they been bothering you?” he grated.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle, but life’s more comfortable when you’re preventing their approaches.” She executed a flawless racing start and flashed a guileless smile his way via the mirror. “And thanks for the tips. I didn’t _quite_ manage to flatten Morrison’s foot, but it was close.”

“Glad to hear I have my uses,” he half-joked, keeping his eyes firmly on the road. Purdey shifted her hand from the gearstick, grazing the back against his thigh.

“Lots of them,” she agreed. “I meant it, Mike. I _have_ missed you.”

He risked a glance at her then, oddly shy. “Thanks, Purdey. That means a lot,” he admitted. She nodded, pleased.

“Good. It ought to,” she said, changing the subject to the delights – or lack thereof – of the East German restaurant scene for the remainder of the journey home.

*

The pot of stew that might have lasted her three days was consumed in one sitting, rapidly followed by the whole of her feather-light mousse. Conversation flowed, broken by bouts of raucous laughter as they compared notes on their recent mole-hunts. A normal person - an average friend, a non-agent – would have assumed the man who moved to slouch beside her on the cosy couch, long legs stretched out and half an eye on the television news, was perfectly at ease.

As both an expert secret agent and a more-than-close friend, Purdey knew otherwise. “Gambit. What’s wrong?”

“Hm? Nothing.”

Big blue eyes, bright as the Pacific at midsummer, fixed on his face, and the careful smile he had pinned there began to falter. “I was thinking about them harassing you – Morrison and the rest,” he admitted. Purdey gripped his hand.

“Then don’t,” she instructed firmly. “Because they won’t any more. The king’s back in the jungle. The vultures daren’t descend while he’s around.”

Both brows arched. “Is that what I am?” he wondered, the words half-purr, half-growl, a tone as tangible as a physical caress. Purdey swallowed. Hard.

“Apparently our colleagues think so,” she conceded hoarsely. Gambit tilted his head, regarding her with a quizzical eye. 

“Do I need to apologise for that?” he asked, clearing his throat under her puzzled stare. “Or – well, anything else?”

“Not that I know of.” And he had the gall to claim she veered off onto unfathomable tangents Purdey reflected, lightly caressing the clenched hand she still held. “Unless you raided my secret marshmallow stash when you used the bathroom.”

“You keep your marshmallows _there?_ ” he teased. Purdey tossed her head.

“A _real_ gentleman doesn’t ask personal questions like that,” she scolded. Gambit sniffed.

“Not being one, I wouldn’t know,” he parried, the impulsive merriment fading as fast as it had come. “Purdey, if I did something… inappropriate, said something you didn’t like. You would tell me?”

“Of course.” Ridiculous man! “Oh.”

He watched it dawn, captivated by the beauty of comprehension illuminating her exquisitely-moulded features. “Mike Gambit,” she murmured, fond exasperation softening every syllable. “You know me better than that. I’m quite capable of cutting down _any_ unwelcome attentions.”

His mouth – so beautifully shaped, she always thought, the prominent dip of the top lip giving him a pout the greatest screen siren would envy – puckered appealingly. “Does that mean… I’d hate to think I made you uncomfortable,” he faltered, as near to stammering as she had ever heard him. 

With a sigh she stretched forward, gently brushing a single ebony wave from his brow and letting the silken curl twirl around her finger. “ _Welcomed_ attentions are _quite_ a different matter.”

The forehead beneath her touch creased, the pursed mouth thinning into a tight line as Gambit assessed what he’d heard and – more importantly – the meaning he might be expected to attach to it. “You don’t mind me flirting with you?” he clarified, uncharacteristically cautious.

“I’ve just said so, haven’t I?” she tutted.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking,” he pointed out, with remorseless logic. Gentle fingertips smoothed his frown away before pulling back, a balled hand hovering before his face.

“One.” The first finger lifted. “I haven’t broken your back in three places. Two. We’re still working together. Three. I’m a positively monstrous tease. And four – most importantly – _your_ attentions have never been less than a pleasure. Do I make myself clear?”

The utter joy that blazed in his eyes left her giddy: a sensation, Purdey gathered, her only true partner was sharing in full as he lolled against the backrest, breathing deeply. “I should’ve gone away sooner,” he murmured, and the hand he brushed across his glistening brow was definitely less than steady. “First she calls me a gentleman. Now…”

“She states the blatantly obvious.” Before she could lose courage, Purdey ducked in, planting a noisily chaste kiss full on his lips and following it up with a second to the bumped bridge of his nose. “And you’re supposed to be good at reading women! Surely you can tell when a girl’s attracted to you, Mike Gambit.”

“ _A_ girl, or a Purdey-girl?”

“Is there a difference?” Uncertain whether she was flattered or insulted, Purdey drew back to better contemplate his beautifully ecstatic expression.

“There are lots of girls around, but the Purdey version’s unique,” he told her, almost serious but for the dancing eyes, pure jade with exultation. “I’ve never known where I stand with that species.”

“Perhaps you do now.” That he identified the powerful attraction she felt had been the basis of all her games, but now… “Mike Gambit,” she sighed, swamped by the heady combination of vexation and tenderness only he could arouse. “How often must I tell you? One of these days…”

He laughed, the lines of post-operation exhaustion fading away to leave him young and carefree, giddy as a boy with his first real, live date. “Oh, I’m looking forward to it,” he purred, tugging her down, her head pillowed cosily against his chest. Purdey nestled in, turning her cheek until she could feel the familiar hard outline of the St Christopher lying beneath his shirt.

“So am I, Mike,” she promised, accepting as he did that it wouldn’t be this day. Too tired, too giddy, much too overwhelmed: and that was just her. “Believe me, so am I.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An historical note: construction on the Berlin Wall began in the summer of 1961, under the supervision of Erich Honecker. By the mid-seventies, he was East Germany’s head of state, a position he occupied until October of 1989. His creation fell a few weeks after he did.


End file.
